A funny thing often happens on the way to soaking the rich: They
don't stick around for the bath. Take Britain, where Her Majesty's
Revenue and Customs service reports that the number of taxpayers
declaring £1 million a year in income fell by more than 60% in fiscal
2010-2011 from the year before.

That was the year that millionaires became liable for the 50% income-tax rate that Gordon Brown's government introduced in its final days in 2010, up from the previous
40% rate. Lo, the total number of millionaire tax filers plunged to
6,000 in 2010-2011, from 16,000 in 2009-2010.

The new tax was meant to raise about £2.5 billion more revenue. So
much for that. In 2009-2010 British millionaires contributed about £13.4
billion to the public coffers, or just under 9% of the total tax
liability of all taxpayers that year. At the 50% rate, the shrunken pool
yielded £6.5 billion, or about 4.4%....

Politicians would love to lay the whole burden of their policies on a
tiny minority of the rich, but you can't finance the welfare state on
the shoulders of the 1%. That's something for the U.S. to remember as
President Obama pretends he can fill a $1 trillion budget hole with tax
hikes on "millionaires and billionaires."